


Happier

by KalendraAshtar



Category: Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: F/M, Ficlet, Fluff and Angst, Modern AU, Oneshot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-07 20:54:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14089455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KalendraAshtar/pseuds/KalendraAshtar
Summary: Song ficlet for Ed Sheeran’s Happier.





	Happier

##  **_Happier_ **

I entered the small coffee shop, unfolding my scarf as soon as I felt the merciful warmth of the heating system, aiming towards a quiet table at the corner, as I shook off snowflakes from my curls.

As I waited for the small waitress to bring me my cranberry scone and a large cup of steaming tea, I opened my notebook and started reading the notes I had taken. It was a very hard case, a young patient with a rare tumor compressing his bile duct – presenting with jaundice, looking like the most recent character of  _The Simpsons._ The previous surgeon in charge of the case had announced it to be unresectable, which gave him about three months of life expectancy. At the age of thirty, you are seldom ready for your life to end – least of all without throwing a good fight.

And that was what I was planning to offer him – a risky procedure, only done in the past by a handful of surgeons in the country. If it worked, he would be cancer free – and it was my job to guarantee it worked. I had barely slept the last couple of nights, immersed in planning the surgery to the finest detail.

I loved my job, fiercely – even in the moments I hated it. I never lost the tingling on my palms when I held the scalpel or the sudden feel of a jump inside my belly, like I had missed a step, whenever I finished a hazardous procedure. Besides, it was a very welcome distraction from the wreckage of my personal life.

I sipped my tea, delighted with the smoky taste of the Highland blend, strong and homely on the back of my tongue. It reminded me of the taste of  _his_  skin against my lips and I swallowed hard, slightly shaking my head to disperse unwelcome memories.

The bell above the door rang, a small tornado of snow allowed in as new customers entered the cosy place. I bit the back of my pencil, tilting my head to better discern an approach, as I mobilized the invisible pancreas before me. I smiled, seeing the vessels and ducts so well exposed in the eye of my mind, ready to be conquered, and raised my eyes to ask for a second congratulatory scone.

I saw his back but recognized him immediately –  _I had kissed that spot just behind his ear, where his hair curled at the nape, countless times._

He was wearing his pilot uniform underneath his overcoat, the flight captain’s hat placed next to his elbow on the table. I had a sudden flash of his hands placing that hat on my head, a playful smile on his full lips, his slightly callused hands roaming my otherwise naked body.  _No_.

Without thinking, I was already making myself small on my table, shrinking to the point where I could almost hide under the tasteful tablecloth – wishing I had gone to another place, in another time, in another world.

Only then I noticed he had company - a cute blonde girl wearing stewardess clothes, her lips painted red to match the satin scarf prettily tied around her neck in a bow. She sat in front of him on the table, a complicit smile plastered on her face, as he talked – probably sharing something about a recent trip.

He was always coming and going, flying around the world – I remembered all too well setting my alarm to the middle of the night, just so I could listen to his voice in Tokyo. Kissing him goodbye –  _there had been so many goodbyes, not enough hellos_  – before he left to New York. Texting him, unsure where in the world he was exactly – but painfully aware it wasn’t by my side.

The nights became so long, always craving, always wondering. I felt split in two, half of myself scattered in the wind, travelling on the air - while the other half was forced to anchor it, bearing down, struggling with heaviness. There weren’t enough kisses to ease the constant ache, as much as he tried –  _and he had tried_.

_“Do ye not want me anymore?”_  He had asked me on the final night, broken –  _Oh, so broken_.

I hadn’t answered him and in my silence he took his leave, shoulders hunched in pain. In truth, I couldn’t fathom a time when I wouldn’t want him – and that was the problem, wasn’t it? I kept wanting  _and wanting and wanting_ , wanting so much everything hurt, wanting so much I feared I would physically break.

The flight attendant touched his hand – to my horror he didn’t shy away from it. It lingered there, natural and possessive, and I felt the scone doing cartwheels inside my stomach like a flour acrobat.

She leaned over and told him something, slightly sticking her tongue out in mischief and he laughed. Throat and lungs and vocal chords, clapping and singing, an orchestra on a perfect rendition of amusement. Standing ovation from the crowd. Claire Beauchamp dead in the audience.

He used to laugh like that with me. Jamie always laughed with his entire body. He was that kind of man – whole in everything he did. I recalled the sensation of his laugh as I laid my cheek on his chest, a scientist studying the mechanisms of happiness. For a moment I closed my eyes and covered them with my hand, foolishly disturbed by the realization I didn’t hold his laughter in exclusiveness.

Jamie looked happy. I could see the outline of his smile, the corners of his mouth turned up in contentment. Had he been that happy with me, once? Before I filled our lives with insecurities, demands and frailties?

She squeezed his hand – fingers touching, skin meeting, hearts melting? - and got up, putting on her elegant coat. With a swish of blonde hair, she kissed his cheek – clearly no amiable kiss demanded such duration, in my opinion – and with a light caress on his forehead, left him finally alone.

He looked around, searching for the waitress to ask for a refill and – of course – spotted me. It was like standing on stage, two spotlights beaming on us, everything else left in darkness. Jamie glanced at me and I proudly endured his gaze, asserting that I saw his happiness and wasn’t shaken at all by it.  _Liar_.

Slowly I made my way to his table, a slug crawling on a lettuce leaf, ugly but brave. I seemed to be ken on eating every crumb of my cake of sorrow and then smile, pretending it was sweet.

“Hello, Jamie.” I greeted him, bracing myself on the notebook I carried. His hair was somewhat shorter than the last time I had seen him, a couple of months ago, his uniform impeccable, the tie on his neck just a bit loose. I used to make his knots and suddenly panicked, fearing that the blonde girl was a master of turns and twists, able of fixing his heart as well as his tie.

“Hello, Claire.” Jamie replied, his voice cautious. “How are ye?”

“Good.” I smiled nervously. “Are you back from work?”

“Aye.” He fidgeted with the mug in front of him, a soft hesitant smile on his lips. “Just got back from Brazil. It was a wee furnace there.”

“Ah.” I swallowed hard, struggling to come up with other pleasantries I could share with him.  _Do you smile in your sleep when she touches you?_ “You look good. Happy.”

“What are ye asking me, Claire?” He avoided my gaze, his face abruptly serious.

“Nothing.” I replied in a hoarse voice, well aware that he could spot the tears forming on the corners of my eyes, in the fountains of my soul. “Just that. You looked happy with her.”

“She’s a good lass.” He glared at me, his eyes outrageously blue and intent. “She understands what life is for me. I feel that I can talk to her.”

“As you couldn’t talk to me?” I tried to smile again and failed miserably, the glass of my face polished and glistening, reflecting the thousands of small sorrows hidden in the corners of my eyes.

“I told ye all my soul and heart.” Jamie lowered his eyes, grabbing his hat. “In the end it wasna enough. That is my utmost regret, Claire - that it wasna enough.”

I stood there, speechless, as he gathered his things and left. I thought of the bleeders that elude the most capable surgeon, the cardiac arrest that lasts forever, the hands inside where we are most private, touching the core of what we are, unable to reach what had been lost. I slammed my heart at him as he closed the door behind him –  _“Jamie!”_  – knowing all too well I had no one to blame but myself. I had traded all for nothing, convinced it was a worthy bargain –  _blind, blind, fool_.

I crawled home, shaken to the very marrow of my bones, oozing love and loss – sticky and queasy with it. In medical school they had told me how the brain works to protect itself – the clever barrier surrounding it, the plasticity, the temperature regulation – and yet my brain seemed decided to finish me, incessantly playing memories of Jamie, smacking me with my own recklessness. I had no self-preservation left, for I loved him to the atoms of me.

I had seen him happy without me – there was joy there to be sure, in knowing him well. But the pain was almost unbearable, no last redoubt of magical thinking left, where I could hide and pretend we would find our way back to each other.  _He was gone. Pushed away by my own two hands._

I collapsed on the couch, curling into fetal position, making myself small and smaller. My ears were filled with the sounds of my own heart and I willed him to stop, to let go of beating, to be still and let me be.

_He kissed my cheek on our first date. I kissed his lips on the second. Loved all of himself by the tenth. My heart leapt when I saw him, tall and gallant in his uniform, almost running to hold me in his arms at the hospital. When he told me flying was his second favourite thing. When he told me I was first. Red Jamie, my Jamie._

A knock on the door, fast and rhythmed. A secret code for the lover coming.

I padded to the door, afraid and wanting.  _Hopeful._

I opened the door and he was standing there, snowflakes turning into rivers on the brim of his hat. He reached out with his hand and I took it, already knowing I’d never let go again.

“I was happier with ye.” He whispered in a husky voice. And I remembered it all, the happiness and love I’d known, waiting in him as kisses on his lips.


End file.
